Speed of snow melt

Do you know how fast old snow can melt? Hard to tell if you don’t have reliable stats on hand or have not measured it; after wondering about it myself, I started keeping tabs on the rate of snow melt around the middle of April and my findings are beginning to come together. I simply planted a stake in the pile of snow that’s lingering in our backyard, and have kept track of its daily melt. While I believe that it may take until May 20 for the last bit of snow to disappear, the preliminary results show that the process is pretty linear in spite of temperature and weather variations, and not as significant as I would have thought. During the time I’ve been measuring it, snow has melted on average 1.8 inch per day. According to scientists, the rate of snow melt is dependent on the energy available, mostly in the form of radiations. Simply put, warming causes the snow pack to melt - something we’d all figured out! Daily snow melt in shaded areas (like a north slope, under a forest, behind a house or a structure) is considerably less than in open areas where the snow is exposed to solar radiations and wind. Dirt particles in the snow will also accelerate the process and so will rain, but intense sunshine during late spring and summer remains the principal melting energy source. Now that you know everything about snow melt, it’s time to enjoy spring!